Using the cases of Wal-Mart and IKEA, this paper takes a productive systems approach to examine Ôvarieties of capitalismÕ from the perspective of the ways by which production and market relations are structured and prioritised. It considers the nature of these relations and their interaction...

Entrepreneurs cannot develop a business single handedly. One of the most important tasks the entrepreneur faces is to recruit, allocate work to, motivate and retain employees who will help the business to grow. Based on survey data, this paper examines the HRM orientations of UK and Japanese...

This paper investigates the importance of managerial capital to involuntary insolvency and acquisition in UK small and medium-sized companies. Given that small businesses are informationally opaque and lack detailed financial data, the role of non-financial factors such as managerial capital has...

It is commonly asserted that high rates of entrepreneurship and superior economic performance in the United States is linked to a higher cultural tolerance of business failure. After reviewing cross country patterns of entrepreneurship we develop in this paper a measure of cultural attitudes...

Why do small firms in emerging industries choose to diversify? Theories of strategic management suggest that diversification is driven by search for exogenous market opportunities, deployment of slack resources, or the exploitation of current knowledge. Institutional organization theory suggests...

The extraordinary growth of the Irish economy - the 'Celtic Tiger' - since the mid-1990s has attracted a great deal of interest, commentary and research. Indeed, many countries are now looking to Ireland as an economic development role model, and The Sapir Report (2003) has suggested that...

Legal origins theory suggests that law reform, strengthening shareholder and creditor rights, should enhance financial development. We use recently created datasets measuring legal change over time in a sample of 25 developing, developed and transition countries to test this claim. We find that...

We consider the consequences of the regular private meetings between directors of FTSE 100 companies and their major institutional shareholders. Whilst the economic incentives for both the flow of information and the formation of 'strategic informational relationships' between the two have been...

We examine the impact of acquisitions on executive pay in UK acquirers over 1984-2001. For the overall sample, which includes foreign, domestic, public and private targets, there is a significant transitory pay increase. Pay changes are not affected by target nationality or organizational form,...